


To Set You Free

by adjovi



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 01:25:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adjovi/pseuds/adjovi
Summary: How they got Eliot back





	To Set You Free

**Author's Note:**

> I would sacrifice more than you'd ever believe just to set you free.  
> \--Tyler Knott Gregson
> 
> Originally I was going to make this part of the Fiddler series, but I am going in a different direction with that one, so thought this was better as a standalone one shot.
> 
> Thanks for any comments or kudos. :)

Quentin felt Margo enter his room, so he shifted a bit, burrowing deeper into the covers. Maybe she wouldn’t see him. He gasped when she ripped the covers completely off the bed, throwing them onto the floor.

“Hey, asshole. You really think hiding out in here is going to solve anything?” She moved around the room, throwing open the curtains and opening the window, letting fresh, cold air drift in. He shivered, wrapping his arms around his legs, pulling them to his chest. “Come on,” she hauled him up with a surprisingly strong grip, forcing him to standing. She dragged him down the hallway to the bathroom, drew back the shower curtain and slapped the taps on with one hand, then shoved him under the freezing spray, clothes and all. “You fucking stink.” She closed the curtain and he heard her leave.

He stood there under the slowly warming water, not moving for a good minute, then finally stripping out of his wet clothes, letting them hit the shower floor with a thick whump. He cleaned himself in earnest now, trying to scrub away the shame, letting the water run far too hot, pinking his skin. He felt like shit, had known he was letting her down, but felt incapable of doing anything. He had been in bed the better part of three days, only emerging when needs arose, living mostly off of whiskey and saltines. He opened his mouth, drinking down the hot water which tasted almost sweet to him, he was that dehydrated. He finally finished cleaning up, and wrapped a towel around his waist, heading back to the safety of his room. The smell hit him fully in the face, like a locker room mated with ass. Awesome. He threw the window open wider and turned on the fan he kept by his bed for white noise. He sank onto the edge of his bed just as someone knocked at his door.

“You decent?” Margo didn’t wait for a response, just barged right in, a piece of paper in her hands. Quentin adjusted the towel around his waist. “Better?” She looked at him warily. “Well, at least you smell better. Jesus Christ, what were you even doing in here?” She looked around with reproach, wrinkling her nose.

He just watched her silently, utter humiliation apparently preventing him from speaking. “I was…” he sighed. “I’m sorry, Margo.”

She sighed in response, moving over to sit next to him on the bed. “So. Josh might have found something.” She handed the paper she was holding to him. “Something really fucking good.”

As far as he could tell, it was a spell of some sort. But not any spell he had ever seen before. Or any one spell. It seemed like a bunch of different spells stitched together somehow, a weird kaleidoscope of words and images, loosely linked but making one singular pattern. “What is this?”

She smiled at him, excitement sparkling her eyes in a way that he had not seen in a long time. “Josh thinks it might work!”

“Work for what?” A tiny spark of hope blossomed in his chest, but he quickly doused it. They’d been down this road far too many times before.

She grasped his arm. “Bringing him back, dumbass! Were you dropped on your head as a child?!” Her eyes shone.

He took in a deep breath. “Margo. I want to believe it, too. But we’ve gotten our hopes up too many times now.”

She stood, furiously pacing in front of him. “So, what? We do nothing?” She gestured angrily around the room. “We just fucking hole ourselves up in our stank caves and wish Eliot back?” She stopped right in front of him, hands on her hips.

“Margo, I…” something on the page distracted him. "Holy shit, Margo. Do you know what this means?” He pointed to a phrase.

She sighed, looking vaguely guilty. “Yeah.” She threw her hair over her shoulder. “So?”

“So?” He stood up and his towel started drifting down, so he quickly pulled it tighter.

She scoffed at him. “Please. Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

He moved over towards the dresser, shimmying into boxer shorts before letting the towel drop. He pointed to the phrase again, running his finger along the words. “Ok. So. My Aramaic is a little rusty, but I think it says: _the…the caster’s life to return the living..._ ” She didn’t seem too affected but what he had just said. He stared at her. “Margo, Jesus. Someone has to fucking _die_ to get Eliot back?

She shrugged. “Again I say...So?”

“So?” He ran his hand threw damp hair. “You really think that is what he would want?”

She licked her lips, she was nervous but trying to cover. “Well, seeing as he really doesn’t get a vote in this…” She studied her nails with a practiced indifference.

“So, it’s has to be you?” It was his turn to scoff at her, feeling a strange mix of anger and grief brewing inside. He was shouting. “Christ, Margo. You really think Eliot would want come back to a world without you? He loves you more than anything else in the entire universe!”

She shouted right back. “You fucking idiot. He’s _in_ love with you. What is the fucking point if the fairy tale ends with you dead?” Her eyes were wide with fury. “Besides, it's the person closest to him that has to do it. His heart. Says so right there.” She angrily flicked a finger at the page.

"He's not!" Quentin was pacing now. "It's not like that."

"Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night."

They fought until their voices were hoarse, taking the fight downstairs, not caring who heard. Finally, he just decided it was easier to let her win. They drank and cried and clung to each other, much like they had done ever since they realized Eliot was completely lost to them. He carried her up the stairs and put her to bed, kissing her lightly on the brow. He gently tugged at the spell sheet she had grasped in her hands, freeing it. He seriously considered saying good bye to Julia, but knew she would just try and stop him.

In the end, he chose Josh to help him. After all, Josh had been the one who had found the spell, wedged inexplicably into the spine of some book. Luckily for them, notEliot had been staying with them, the sad fuck who was the current inhabitant of Eliot’s body. He had emerged dazed and completely confused when the monster was evicted, clinging to them for a lack of any better ideas. Quentin didn’t even bother to get to know his name. They knocked him out with an easy sleep spell, then they cast another making his body float so he could be pushed along with two fingers. _Light as a feather, stiff as a board._ They needed to be outside, lit only by the fading twilight and a shitty camping lantern that Josh had to slap a few times to jostle into life. This was going to be messy. A lot of blood was involved, apparently, more than Quentin had been prepared for. He and the other man were both stripped to the waist, and Josh was kneading blood from each of their hands into a silver bowl, mingling them together. When they had enough, Josh sat back on his heels.

“You ready, Q?”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Now or never.” He dipped his finger into the viscous blood, and began painting the symbols displayed on the page, marking the other man’s face, arms, sternum, and belly. Josh was repeating the pattern on Quentin’s own body. This is why they needed a third.

The air started to feel charged and heavy around them, and the sky had taken on the threatening shade of green as it did right before a storm. “I think it’s go time, Q!” Josh shouted at him.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Coldwater!” Margo was running full speed towards them, hand outstretched and screaming over the wind. “Don’t you fucking dare, you motherfucker!”

Quentin rapidly chanted the spell, his hair whipping around wildly. He looked at her, speaking urgently, tears falling unbidden from his eyes. “I'm sorry. Just tell him... I had to.”

Suddenly, all of the symbols on both their bodies started to glow, and he stared at the marks on his arm in amazement. That was until the searing agony set in, flailing skin right to the bone where he was marked. He fell to his knees. A small tear had opened up in the air just above the other’s body and seemed to be sucking the energy coming from the markings, glowing a brighter and brighter blue. Quentin vaguely realized he was screaming, could hear Margo and Josh shouting over the wind, but could not make out what they were saying. He felt like he was being torn completely apart, and didn’t know how much longer he could hold on. There was a bright flash of light as the tear expanded, then seemed to explode into tiny embers, a blanket of fireflies settling over the other man’s prone form. That was the last thing he saw before everything went mercifully black.

It was sound that came back first. Their voices were soft and muffled, the way they were right before you fall asleep. He was aware of a pain at the base of his skull, dull, but rapidly making itself known.

“Oh my God, I think he’s breathing.” Margo? Maybe? The voice was female. Whoever she was, she sounded like she had been crying.

“Oh my God. Q?” He definitely knew that voice.

Holy shit, they were all dead. He sat up way too quickly, instantly regretting this decision as the dull throb in his skull blossomed into a fucking railroad spike of pain. Do dead people feel pain? His hand instinctually shot up to feel the wound. He squeezed his eyes tightly, taking a few rapid breaths. “Fuck!” When he finally opened his eyes, he found three very concerned people kneeling on the ground, just staring at him. They had all been crying. He skipped his gaze around, settling on Margo. “Are we dead?”

She slapped him across the face, hard. “You fucking asshole.”

His hand flew to his face, still warm from the slap. “Ow!”

“Bambi, go easy on him. He’s had a hard day.” He finally allowed himself to look at the man seated closest to him. He could hear his own heart beating in his ears. Eliot smiled at him tenderly. “Hi there.”

“Are you…real?” He reached out a hand towards him, then pulled it back, reconsidering at the last moment. He had forgotten to breathe.

Margo scooted over, wrapping herself around Eliot’s arm. “Damn skippy he’s real.” She smiled at him, all traces of the earlier anger completely gone. “Ask him something only he would know.”

Quentin’s mind was completely blank. He knew he was just staring at Eliot, mouth agape, but felt powerless to control this. He got the sense that more time had passed than he had realized, as it was now fully night. 

Eliot started speaking for him, ticking things off on his fingers. “He hates cantaloupe, but somehow loves watermelon. Oh, and bananas make him gag.” He fucking _winked_ at him. “He had a beagle named ‘Happy’ that died when he was 11. His favorite color is purple. He hates jazz yet secretly has a weird thing for early 90s hip hop.” He paused for a long beat, just looking at Quentin, his voice very soft now. “He named our son after his father.”

“Oh”. It was all he could manage. He just kept staring.

Eliot held his gaze for a long moment, openly staring at him, before turning back towards Josh. “Wait, you said this was a ‘sacrifice spell’?” Josh grinned and nodded. “But, don’t those almost always fail?”

Josh stood up now. “That’s ‘cause they didn’t use this!” He pulled a sheet of paper from his back pocket with another spell on it, shaking it open and slapping it once. He danced around in a circle, throwing his voice unnaturally low. ”I am the master of the sea, I am the ruler…”

“Never took you for a Gilbert and Sullivan fan,” Eliot cut in drily.

“Dude, seriously?” Josh shook his head in disappointment.

Quentin huffed a laugh despite himself, finally finding his voice. “From 'Raiders'?” Eliot just stared at him blankly. “Indiana Jones?”

Eliot just shrugged at him, shaking his head once before looking back up at Josh.

Margo gestured towards the paper Josh was holding. “So…?”

Josh pulled the paper from both ends, displaying it. “This is a kind of…locator spell. Marked the caster. If we didn’t mark the right caster...anyone _but_ him would have died. We’re not exactly surrounded by ‘Up with People’ types right now. Any of these other yahoos tried to be the hero…well. I don’t need any more blood on my hands.”

“Wait.” Margo shoved off of Eliot’s shoulder up to standing, hands cocked on her hips. She pointed an accusing finger in Josh’s direction. “You knew this whole time he wasn’t going to die? Why not just tell us?”

Josh shrugged. “I couldn’t.” She took a threatening step towards him and he put up his hands in a placating gesture. “Look. He had to believe he was going to die, or the spell wouldn’t work.”

“Then why not just tell me?” He could tell from her voice that Margo was wrestling with hurt and anger. “I was going to do it. I would have…” She started crying now.

Eliot stood then, pulling her into a hug and kissing the crown of her head.

“You all had to believe. Besides, I wouldn’t have let you.” Josh gestured at Quentin. “When Q came to me tonight, let’s just say it was quite the relief.” He pointed at the back of Quentin’s head. “Sorry. I thought it was supposed to be painless. You weren’t supposed to even feel it—that was the whole point. The second spell must have set it off.”

Quentin lightly touched the base of his skull, hissing in pain as his fingers grazed the wound. He felt Eliot kneel beside him, gingerly brushing his fingers just above where it hurt. “It looks like…a brand.”

“Wait…you branded me?” Quentin looked back up at Josh. Eliot’s hand drifted to his neck, settling there. It was the first they had touched, and his skin felt so very warm. Despite himself, Quentin leaned into the touch.

Josh held his hands up again, before lighting the joint he had pulled out of somewhere. “That’d be a negative, Ghost Rider. _Magic_ branded you. That’s how I knew you were the caster.” He exhaled a plume of smoke.

“But…why me?” He looked first at Josh, then back towards Eliot, who was looking at him with something akin to wonder. Eliot's eyes were shining as if he were about to cry.

Josh coughed, laughing. “Margo’s right. You really are a fucking idiot.”

Suddenly, Quentin jerked upwards and staggered over a few feet, arms pinwheeling. He fell to his knees once more, heaving up whatever he had left in his stomach. “He’ll be fine. He’s just getting all that shit out of his system.” Quentin coughed and spit a few more times into the dirt. “You’re just lucky I was a Boy Scout.” Josh lightly chucked a bottle of water and a hand towel towards Quentin.

Quentin took a few more deep breaths and then swished some of the water in his mouth, spitting it out. He wiped his mouth with the cloth and stood. Josh had pulled out some t-shirts from his bag and was handing one to Eliot. It was a novelty tee, completely covered by Chewbacca’s hairy chest, slashed diagonally by a bandoleer. He shrugged at Eliot's apparent disgust. “Sorry, dude.” The one he gave Quentin had a cat with two golden guns riding a rainbow unicorn.

“Why does he get the cool one?” Eliot jerked a thumb in Quentin’s direction.

“El, he did just save your life.” Margo came up beside Eliot, wrapping her arm around his waist.

“True, Bambi. True.” He grabbed Quentin by the shoulder with his free arm, kissing him on the forehead as he pulled him in close. “Also, we are talking about varying degrees of nerdom here, so…”

“Hey!” Josh muttered in mock protest. “You guys are just lucky I had two clean shirts.”

Quentin felt the warm, solid body against his side and finally allowed himself to feel a cautious measure of relief. He threw his head back, looking up at the stars, feeling impossibly whole in a way he never thought he would again.


End file.
